Back from Break

1/16/12
I am finally back from break, so we spent the day in the lab catching up and refreshing. Dr. Kirchman had a set of books on birds and I was able to learn a bit more about rails. Rails are literally found ALL over the world, but we are focusing on the rails on the Solomon Islands. Even on these small islands, the range of diversity in these birds is amazing. The birds we are studying are categorized in the species Roviana. On the evolutionary tree of life (more scientifically known as a phylogenetic tree) Gallirallus rovianae is a decedent of the buff-banded rails or Gallirallus philippensis. Here it gets a little more tricky. A scientist (whose name I cannot recall) traveled to the Solomon Islands. A native had caught a Roviana rail, but had eaten it. However, he skinned the bird and salted it and then presented it to the scientist. The scientist recognized this to be a new species of rails, but also realized that not all of the rail's feathers had not grown in and it was therefore not an adult. Baby rail's molt patterns change from when they are young to when they grow up, the same way a duckling is yellow and fuzzy, but has different coloring as an adult.
The Roviana rail had similar coloring to the buff-banded rail and was therefore placed as a decedent of the buff-banded rail in the rail phylogenetic tree. However, since the Roviana rail is not mature, the similar coloring to the buff-breasted rail cannot be relied upon. The Roviana rail also has many similarities to a rail called Nesoclopeus woodfordi. By processing the DNA we have now collected from our Roviana rail, we will be able to determine where the G. rovianae belongs on the phylogenetic tree (I hope I'm not saying anything wrong here :O).
Our next step in our rail project is sending the DNA off to be processed and sent back to us with a nice long list of Cs, Ts, Gs, and As. However, it is cheaper for us to send a case of 96 DNA samples than it would be to have to send the 24 individual samples we currently have, but that just means I will get to spend more time in the lab! We currently have mitochondrial DNA from our Roviana rail. Mitochondrial DNA, though, is the DNA you received from your mother, and therefore only contains half of your genetic makeup (since it does not include the father's DNA). We are going to extract nucleic DNA that contains the rail's entire genetic makeup and fill up the rest of the case. I also have some exciting pictures of the results of our PCR under the ultraviolet light which I will explain above :D